Where Have You Gone Charming Billy?

Learning Goal: Determine the figurative meaning of words and phrases and analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning of the work as a whole.

Today we'll discuss and review what the story WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, CHARMING BILLY?  Then, in groups you will look at some key moments of the story and determine the figurative meaning of those moments and relate them back to the main idea of the story.

Example: Where Have You Gone, Charming Billy? 

The title is an allusion to a song (see wikipedia page here ).  How does this allusion become a symbol and reinforce the main theme?

In groups look at the following:

1) "One by one, like sheep in a dream, they passed through the hedgerow crossed quietly over a meadow and came down to the rice paddy."  (828 lines 3-4)

2) "He was pretending he was a boy again, camping with his father in the midnight summer along the Des Moines River" (828 lines 14-15)

3) "When they reached the sea, things would be better.  They would have their rear guarded by three thousand miles of ocean, and they would be safe."  (830 lines 45-46)

4) "Already the Southern Cross was out."  (830 line 49)

5) "He counted his steps, concentrating on the numbers, pretending that the steps were dollar bills and that each step made him richer and ricer, so that soon he would be a wealthy man, and he kept counting and considered the ways he might spend the money after the war..." (831 lines 64-66)

6) "The graveyard had a perfumy smell.  A nice place to spend the night, he thought."  (831 line 96)

7) "SORRY TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR SON BILLY BOY WAS YESTERDAY SCARED TO DEATH IN ACTION IN THE REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM, VALIANTLY SUCCUMBING TO A HEART ATTACH..."  (834 lines 176-181)

8) Also think about Doublemint chewing gum.  Paul Berlin's imagination of having "War Buddies", the soldiers singing after Billy Watkins body falls out of the helicopter and gets lost in the rice paddy. 

Homework: Fill out a short story outline.